You don't understand how hard is for a messaging app to gain traction. Telegram has been growing for years and years, and it offers some significant advantages over WhatsApp. Even with all this marketing and effort, I'd say only about 10% of my WhatsApp contacts are on Telegram. Now you want to get people to move to yet another app? For what? Why would they? Because no ads?
If a new app ever manages to become big (as in, Telegram-level big, let alone WhatsApp), it would take years of raising money and marketing. And how would they pay for that exactly? You think people pay a mensual/anual fee for a messaging apps when there are free alternatives? No, the answer is, again, ads. That or selling user data, which is much worse.
You're too focused on the tech, but you have no understanding of how business works.
> Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative.
People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.
By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.
Sure, as long as it's not legislated (see 'Volksverhetzung').
I mean, my subjective judgement could tell me that you're a fucking faggot and that I should beat the living shit out of you. It would be right for me to have that subjective judgement, but it can't be for monopolies, nor governments.
> fundamental disagreement about how society should be
We may not agree, but we can't say it's a "fundamental disagreement" if there's so much people rooting for it.
> What does that look like?
1) Disagreeing with people online
2) Opening niche internet forums that are lax on moderation (except for illegal content such as child pornography and direct threats)
3) Investing in hosting/domain registrars/payment processors that don't deplatform because of political stance (e.g., Epik, SkySilk)
I've been doing 1) and 2) for some time now, but I want to do 3) as well. I think it will become very profitable during this decade.
> Some people should never have power, like nazis.
That's exactly what I'm arguing against. That's just your opinion and you treat it like some universal axiom. Same way you treat 'Holocaust deniers' as some kind of monstrous apparitions. You may not agree, that's all.
It's people like you that inspire me to counteract this trend with full force.
You know exactly what I mean, cut the bullshit. Point being, deplatforming may be okay for the group who exercises it, but not for the group that is being deplatformed. Who the fuck decides? The government? Some out of touch Big Tech CEOs? Fuck that.
Now, if I'd be willing to argue that this is a antitrust issue (FB, TW, Google / Amazon AWS, CloudFlare / PayPal, Stripe / Visa, MasterCard) having too much power to the point that they decide whether you live or not, and that there should be way more alternatives.